It took five or six tries, his fingers nimble as blocks of wood, but he managed to find the cord to the cover and slide it back into position.
Then he sat there for a long time, staring at the green cover of the cage. Nothing happened. Nothing bad. The sense of weight on the other side of the bars had vanished with the drawing of the veil. The hand that lay on his blotter did not seem real. It looked like alabaster. It looked like wax. It was a candle without a wick. It was a piece of a statue.
An hour could have passed, or a minute, before he found a paper bag, nudged the hand into it using the letter opener, and folded the bag shut.
Bristlewing appeared in his field of vision some time later.
“Bristlewing,” Hoegbotton said. “I’m glad. You’re here.”
“Eh?”
“You see this cage?”
“Yes.”
“I need you to take it to Ungdom.”
“Ungdom?” Bristlewing’s face brightened. He clearly thought this was a joke.
“Yes. To Ungdom. Tell him that I send it with my compliments. That I offer it as a token of renewed friendship.” Somewhere inside, he was laughing at Ungdom’s future discomfort. Somewhere inside, he was screaming for help.
Bristlewing snorted. “Is it wise?”
Hoegbotton stared up at him, as if through a haze of smoke. “No. It isn’t wise. But I would like you to do it anyway.”
Bristlewing waited for a moment, as if there might be something more, but there was nothing more. He walked forward, picked up the cage. As Bristlewing bent over the cage, Hoegbotton thought he saw a patch of green at the base of his assistant’s neck, under his left ear. Was Bristlewing already infected? Was Bristle- wing the threat?
“Another thing. Take the rest of the week off. Once you’ve delivered the cage to Ungdom.” If his assistant was going to dissolve into spores, let him do it elsewhere. Hoegbotton suppressed a giggle of hysteria.
Suspicious, Bristlewing frowned. “And if I want to work?”
“It’s a vacation. A vacation. I’ve never given you one. I’ll pay you for the time.”
“All right,” Bristlewing said. Now the look he gave Hoegbotton was, to Hoegbotton’s eye, very close to a look of pity. “I’ll give the cage to Ungdom and take the week off.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Right. Bye then.”
“Goodbye.”
As Bristlewing negotiated the tiny flotsam-lined pathway, Hoegbotton could not help but notice that his assistant seemed to list to one side, as if the cage had grown unaccountably heavy.
Five minutes after Bristlewing had left, Hoegbotton closed up the shop for the day. It only took seven tries for him to lock the door behind him.
5
When he arrived at the apartment, Hoegbotton told Rebecca he was home early because he had learned of his grandmother’s death. She seemed to interpret his shakes and shudders, the trembling of his voice, the way he needed to touch her, as consistent with his grief. They ate dinner in silence, her hand in his hand.
“Tell me about it,” she said after dinner and he cataloged all the symptoms of fear as if they were the symptoms of loss, of grief. Everywhere he turned, the woman from the mansion confronted him, her gaze now angry, now mournful. Her wounds bled copiously down her dress but she did nothing to stanch the flow.
They went to bed early and Rebecca held him until he found a path toward sleep. But sleep held a kaleidoscope of images to torment him. In his dreams, he walked through Samuel Hoegbotton’s apartment until he reached a long, white hallway he had never seen before. At the opposite end of the hallway, he could see the woman and the boy from the mansion, surrounded by great wealth, antiques fit for a god winking at him in their burnished multitudes. He was walking across a carpet of small, severed hands to reach them. This fact revolted him, but he could not stop walking: the promise of what lay ahead was too great. Even when he began to see his head, his arms, his own legs, crudely soldered to the walls using his own blood, he could not stop his progress toward the end of the hallway. The hands were cold and soft and pleading.
* * *
Despite the dreams, Hoegbotton woke the next morning feeling energetic and calm. The cage was gone. He had another chance. He did not feel the need to follow in Samuel Hoegbotton’s footsteps. Even the imprint on his hand throbbed less painfully. The rain clattering down made him happy for obscure, childhood reasons—memories of sneaking out into thunderstorms to play under the dark clouds, of taking to the water on a rare fishing trip with his father while drops sprinkled the dark, languid surface of the River Moth.
At breakfast, he even told Rebecca that perhaps he had been wrong and they should start a family. Rebecca laughed, hugged him, and told him they should wait to talk about it until after he had recovered from his grandmother’s death. When she did not ask him about the funeral arrangements, he wondered if she knew he had lied to her. On his way out the door, he held her close and kissed her. Her lips tasted of honeysuckle and rose. Her eyes were, as ever, a mystery, but he did not mind.
Once at work, Bristlewing blissfully absent, Hoegbotton searched the store for any sign of mushrooms. Donning long gloves and a fresh mask, he spent most of his time in the old dining room, scuffing his knees to examine the underside of the table, cleaning every surface. The fungus embedded in the mirror had lost its appearance of renewed vigor. Nevertheless, he took an old toothbrush and knife and spent half an hour gleefully scraping it away.
Then, divesting himself of mask and gloves, he went through the same routines with his ledgers as in the past, this time reading the entries aloud since Bristlewing was not there to frown at him for doing so. Fragments of disturbing images fluttered in his mind like caged birds, but he ignored them, bending himself to his routine that he might allow himself no other thoughts.
By noon, the rain had turned to light hail, discouraging many erstwhile customers. Those who did enter the store alighted like crows escaping bad weather, shaking their raincoat wings and unlikely to buy anything.
By one o’clock, he had only made one hundred sels. It didn’t matter. It was almost liberating. He was beginning to think he had escaped great danger, even caught himself wondering if another rich family might experience a gray cap visitation.
At two o’clock, his spirits still high, Hoegbotton received a shock when a grim-faced member of the Cappan’s security forces entered the store. The man was in full protective gear, clothed from head to foot, a gray mask covering his entire face except for his eyes. What could they know? It wasn’t time for an inspection. Had the man looking for a desk talked to them? Hoegbotton scratched at his wounded palm.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
The man stared at him for a moment, then said, “I’m looking for a purse for my mother’s birthday.”
Hoegbotton burst out laughing and had to convince the man it was not directed at him before selling him a purse.
No customers entered the store for half an hour after the Cappan’s man left. Hoegbotton had worked himself into a fever pitch of calm by the time the messenger arrived around three o’clock: a boy on a bicycle, pinched and drawn, wearing dirty clothes, who knocked at the door and waited for Hoegbotton to arrive before letting an envelope flutter to the welcome mat outside the door. The boy pulled his bicycle back to the sidewalk and pedaled away, ringing his bell.